Never Can Say Goodbye
by CountryMusicLover
Summary: Ezra could never really move to Louisiana, could he?    I don't own the characters, just my little version of thier story. Reviews welcome.
1. Chapter 1

"I have to go," said Ezra Fitz as he gripped his young girlfriend's hands. The way he was clinging to her was a sharp contradiction to the words he was saying. "You're the only thing holding me here," he went on. "Your dad would know something was up if I don't take the job transfer." For the first time he felt his heart tangibly break as he watched Aria Montgomery fight the tears he saw welling up in her eyes. Taking in their surroundings, he realized that she must see the same water in his eyes. How could he _not_ get emotional? This would be one the last times he saw Aria for a long time, and probably the last time they'd ever be in this apartment together. There were so many memories here. There was the time they took "couple pictures" with paper bags on their heads because they couldn't risk a real picture of them together, or the time she stayed the night because they thought he would have to resign from Rosewood Day the next morning, or the time she opened up to him about "the Jenna thing." The list could go on and on.

The tears had finally started to leak from her eyes and Ezra took her face in his hands. "A year. A year max. The second you turn eighteen, the second you pick a college, I'll be there. I'll find a job near the school you pick." He saw the fear in her eyes, the unnecessary fear that he would forget about her, that he would find someone else. "Aria, you ARE the girl for me, he reassured her. " I wouldn't have risked my freedom, job, reputation to be with you unless I absolutely thought you could be the one. Aria, I know we can't now, but one day I want to marry you. I figured a promise ring would look to obvious on your hand, so I got you this."

He pulled a pretty gold necklace with a heart hanging from it. "A promise _necklace_?" Aria giggled through her little stream of tears. Ezra nodded and turned the heart around. On the back, in tiny print, there was an engraving that said "Ezra + Aria." "Its perfect," she choked out as she lifted her hair so Ezra could put the necklace around her neck.

"I got a long chain so you can hide it under your clothes. This whole leaving thing would be kinda pointless if we were showing off our commitment to each other. Of course, you can put it on a shorter chain if you'd prefer it," Ezra said as he let go of the clasp and let the necklace hang around her neck.

Aria pulled her dark blue shirt away from her neck and let the necklace fall into the shirt. "No, I like it this way. Its closer to my heart." Aria leaned in and gave a soft, gentle kiss on his lips. "I'll wait for you, I promise," she whispered with just centimeters of space between their faces.

"Thank you," he said as he leaned back, "but I don't want that promise." Her brow scrunched, trying to decipher what he meant. "Don't get me wrong, I want you to wait for me. But," he took a deep breath," if you find someone else, please just… just tell me. I don't want to hold you back and I don't want to be pining over you if you've moved on. So I want you to promise that if your feelings change, you'll tell me."

Aria nodded, "Same here."

"It's a deal," Ezra assured her.

Aria let a small, dry laugh escape her lips. "I feel like we should shake hands and sign a contract of something."

"How about this," he pulled Aria off the coffee table she'd been perched on and onto the couch, "we seal it with a kiss." He tugged on her legs which had been lying on his lap and pulled her even closer to him. This kiss was different than their usual. There was a depressed and desperate undertone and the way Aria greedily held onto his face told Ezra that there would be many more kisses before the night was over.

It was three hours later. Aria lay with her head on Ezra's lap. Ezra's eyes slowly flickered open and he realized that even in his state of half consciousness he had continued to stroke Aria's hair. It wasn't until Aria released a loud sigh that he knew she wasn't asleep. "How long have you been awake?"

"Just about ten minutes. I've been watching the clock." It was only then that Ezra thought to see what time it was.

"Aria!" he said slightly startled. "Its three minutes 'til your curfew. I'll drive you home and drop you off at the end of your street so your parents don't…" He trailed off because when he tried to stand up from the couch, Aria didn't make a move to sit up. In fact it seemed as if she was actually pushing her head harder against his legs as to keep him from standing.

She rolled onto her back so that she was looking up at his face. All she did was slowly shake her head back and forth. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and as he did so he realized this would be another one of those moments engrained into his mind. Another time they had a conversation without needing to use words, one of the many things that made their relationship so special.

"I don't care," Aria shook her head. "I don't care that I'll be late, I don't care what my parents will think, I don't care how they punish me. This is my last night with you and I'm not following their stupid curfew."

"Then I don't want to waste our time sleeping on this couch," Ezra said. "It might be crazy, but do you wanna go on a real date?"

"What? It's 11 o'clock at night. Everything is gonna close soon."

"We'll make it work. The ice cream shop is still open, the movie theater is doing a special midnight showing of some random movie tonight, and after that we can just walk around town." Ezra's eyes shone at the prospect of being able to hold hands and kiss in public, even if it was nighttime and even if it was only this one time.

"Let's do it!" Aria agreed as she slid her left arm into her leather jacket.

They were walking aimlessly, eating the left over movie popcorn, when they realized they were right underneath the clock tower. The same clock tower they had kissed under in the rain. Aria walked over to the same bench she had sat on when she was waiting to see if he would choose her that night not too many weeks ago. "I was so scared you weren't going to come that night."

"I wasn't going too," Ezra said distantly, thinking back. "I had told myself that it would be best for both of us if I didn't come. I told myself I would call you the next day to say that it was over and that talking about it face to face would only make things more confusing. So to keep myself from thinking about it and changing my mind I went into autopilot. That obviously didn't work because I was halfway here when I realized that I was coming to you, not going to my apartment. I knew I couldn't fight my feelings for you anymore."

They stood there silent. Both thinking about how much they had been through together and how they wouldn't change any of it, no matter how things worked out. The shiver that went down Aria's body is what brought Ezra out of his trance and he realized that the temperature had dropped dramatically since they had first started walking. "We should probably head back to my apartment. It's getting really cold out here," Ezra said as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

Ella Montgomery woke up on the couch. "Rats!" she thought as she opened her eyes and realized her contacts were still in. She must have fallen asleep during the newest lifetime movie. She didn't know why she kept watching those movies when all they did was bore her to sleep. She blinked her eyes a couple times to make her contacts come back in focus and when she did, she saw the clock turn from 3:42 to 3:43.

"No! No, no, no!" she thought as she ran up the stairs. She had never heard the door open, even though she was a very light sleeper. Her fears were confirmed when she burst into Aria's room and saw that the bed was still as perfectly made as it had been that morning. As she rushed back down the stairs she thought through the three possibilities. One, Aria was with her friends. That theory was thrown out the window because Aria wouldn't have been stupid enough to not call if that were the case. Not with the already tight grip Byron was putting on her life recently. Two, Aria had been in some kind of accident. The thought sent a shiver down her spine, but for some reason, her gut was telling her that there hadn't been an accident. She'd have gotten a call from the police or something, right? The third choice was the most likely answer. Aria was with Mr. Fitz.

"No! No, no, no!" she thought again as she put on her jacket and took the keys out of her pocket. Aria couldn't be that stupid. She just couldn't. She had to know she would be grounded until her eighteenth birthday and that Byron would immediately call the cops on Mr. Fitz. No, Aria wouldn't risk that. And Mr. Fitz! He had to know the consequences too! But still, there was a part of her that knew that when she reached Mr. Fitz's apartment that she would find her daughter there.

And she was right. When she pulled up next to his building she saw a thin man with dark hair walking from the driver's side to the passenger's side of a car exactly like Mr. Fitz's. When he got to the other sid,e he opened the door and a girl, no a young lady, that Ella would recognize even in the darkest of night stepped out of the car.

Aria took Ezra's hand and let him help her from the car. As she stood on her tip toes to kiss him, she saw a car stopped and someone looking at them. At first panic swept through her mind, thinking that she had caught A spying on them, but then an even more powerful fear hit her when she realized it was her mother's car. She kissed Ezra anyway and when she pulled back she whispered against his cheek. "That's my mom. She's watching us. I gotta go."

She started to step away but remembered that this was really their goodbye. Just as she started to turn back around Ezra caught her arm. He pulled her into the most passionate kiss they had ever shared. When they separated a steady stream of silent tears rolled down both their faces. Neither could force any words out, but Ezra mouthed "I love you" and Aria mouthed it back as she put her hand over the necklace he had given her. They held hands as long as they could reach while Aria made her was to her mom's car and when the distance between them got too far to touch, they both kept their arms out as if they were reaching for each other.

Aria cleared her throat several times, knowing she'd have to explain as soon as she got in the car. She opened the passenger side door to her mother's car and before the door was even shut. She let it all burst out and with every word she spoke the tears rolled more and more freely down her face. "He's taking the job. The job in New Orleans that Dad forced on him. He's leaving tomorrow. I don't care what the consequences are, you have to understand. I just had to see him one last time. I had to." She was careful to keep her voice and tone in check, even if she could do the same with her words.

Ella didn't say anything. She just put the car in drive. Aria could see small tears forming in her mother's eyes and for the first time she truly tried to understand how her mother must feel about this. She'd never considered the fact that dating a man, a teacher, was throwing in her parents' faces that she wasn't a little girl anymore. And she'd never thought about the fact that her parents' didn't know what she and Ezra were like together. How could they know that it was really love and not him taking advantage of her? The only time they had really seen them together was when Ezra had been proclaiming his love for their underage daughter.

"I'm sorry mom. But please believe me when I say that I love him and that the feeling is mutual." Aria said at barely above a whisper. Ella didn't respond at first but swallowed hard.

"He's really gone?" Ella asked at the same volume level.

"Yeah. He's heading out at about 9 this morning."

Ella nodded. "Let's not tell your father about this, okay?" Aria nodded and let out a sigh of relief. Now that it seemed her mother was going to keep her secret, she let herself think about the fact that he really was gonna. Gone for an entire year. But this time she promised herself she would hold back the tears, at least 'til she was safely locked in her room.

Ella looked over at her daughter's face and saw a strain on it that no girl of sixteen should ever have to wear on her face. "This relationship never should have happened. It was wrong, illegal, deceitful…" she told her daughter in a stern voice, but then let her tone soften, "but remember, one day you're going to be grown up. You'll go away to college, or to a job, or… somewhere ." Ella took a deep breath. "And maybe he'll be there. Maybe you two can have the relationship that you should have. That you should have waited to have."

Ella had thought about her daughter's situation a lot. Aria was a girl who usually knew herself pretty well, and there had always been a part of Ella that believed her daughter when she said they truly loved each other. When Ella forced herself to look past the anger she felt at Mr. Fitz, she knew that he was exactly what she wanted for her daughter. Caring, smart, likable, attractive…. his fatal flaw was his age.

The rest of the ride home was quiet, so was the walk up the stairs, but when they turned to go to their separate rooms Aria broke the silence. "Thank you." Ella nodded and continued on to their rooms.


	3. Chapter 3

Ezra was three and a half hours from Rosewood, He had thrown his boxes into his trunk and started on his trip in a daze. A daze he had stayed in for about an hour down the road. When he had finally come back to himself and back to reality, he thought. He thought more than he ever had in his life. He went from crying over leaving to laughing at a memory in mere seconds and then repeated the cycle. That had gone on until about twenty minutes ago when he decided he needed a distraction and went to put on some music. Unfortunately, he realized that the only CD he had that wasn't packed away was the CD of their favorite songs that Aria had made him for their one month anniversary. That was definitely out of the question, so he flipped through the stations on the radio that he was completely unfamiliar with. He got frustrated with that and gave up, turning the radio off. The silence turned out to be worse though, so now he turned on the radio and promised himself he would leave it on whichever station it was already on. He sat through a weird song that repeated the phrase "tick tock" a lot and a song by that kid Justin Bieber. It vaguely passed through the back his mind that the Bieber kid was actually probably older than Aria was.

A quieter, calmer tone started to play. "Elevator buttons and morning air/ Stranger's silence makes me wanna take the stairs," flowed from his car's speakers. He felt a rush of relief when he realized this song would be a lot more normal and likable than the previous two. However, that relief was replaced with a sinking feeling when he started hearing lines like "Seems like there's always someone who disapproves/ They'll judge it like they know about me and you." By the end of the first chorus he had pulled over to the side of the road.

He knew he should turn it off, that listening to a song that reminded him so much of Aria could only hurt him. But he just couldn't force himself to hit the "off" button. As the second verse played, a clear picture of Jackie came to his mind. The words about an ex who tries to stop your relationship and hurt the one you love felt as if they had been written about Jackie and for a second Ezra actually wondered if someone had written this song about his life.

Ezra had planned to stop and listen to the song, regain control of his emotions, and then carry on on his journey. However, the moment the bridge started and he heard the artist sing, "But it's not theirs to speculate, if it's wrong and/ Your hands are tough but they are where mine belong" he found himself speeding down the road. He hadn't even made a conscious decision. It was like his body, or maybe it was the song, had decided for him. He couldn't leave. At the next exit he turned around so that he was headed back towards Rosewood and at the last second it crossed his mind that he didn't even know the name of this life changing song. He pulled his phone out quickly and hit the Shazam app. A few seconds later the words "Ours" and "Taylor Swift" came up on the screen. He laughed to himself knowing Aria would make fun of him for listening to Taylor Swift. Oh man, it felt good to laugh. As soon as he had turned around, it felt as if a huge weight had magically been lifted off his shoulders.

The drive that had originally taken Ezra three and a half hours was cut down to two hours and 50 minutes on his way back. The whole time Ezra had spent planning what he would do, how he would get Hollis to let him keep working in Pennsylvania, how he and Aria could hide their relationship for another year. He'd been so caught up in his thoughts he'd barely noticed how much he was speeding. So he was surprised when he realized he was only minutes from Aria's house. What if her parents were home? What would he do? Would he confront them? Thankfully, as he turned the corner he saw neither of her parent's cars in front of the house and remembered Aria telling him something about her parent's and Mike having a family meeting with Mike's therapist. He didn't bother to turn off the car or close the door when he got to her house; he just made a mad dash for the door. He rang the doorbell 5 times in a row as he stood on the Montgomery's porch catching his breath. He heard feet scurry down the steps probably assuming there was some kind of emergency. Aria threw open the door and when she saw Ezra standing in front of her, he saw her mouth visibly drop open.

"It's not theirs to speculate and they can't take what ours!" Ezra said, quoting what he saw as the most important lines of Taylor Swift's song loudly and firmly.

"What?" Aria was taken aback and confused by Ezra's little outburst.

"Look. I don't care what your parents say; I don't care what the town says. This thing we have, this is us. It's not them. No one can tell us what we feel, or what to feel and no one can tell me not to feel what I feel for you. It's not their choice. Even though this doesn't look right, it has always felt right, and I won't let them change this into something that feels wrong." Ezra repeated the same words he told her when Noel Kahn had threatened to expose them. "I won't let anyone force me away from you."

"What changed your mind?" Aria questioned.

"I think I always knew I couldn't leave, but a Taylor Swift song is what made me realize it." Aria laughed and threw her arms around him. She decided it didn't matter why he was back, she could ask for a better explanation later. What mattered was that he was here and she didn't even plan on being without him again. Who knows how they'll make it work? They'll cross that bridge when they come to it. Right now she just wanted to hold him in her arms and he felt exactly the same way.


End file.
